[Alpine-info] Maildir showing as Empty

[jason-alpine-info at shalott.net]

> Hello. I'm using Alpine 2.25 compiled with the Maildir patch.

>

> Everything has been working fine for a few weeks but the other day I

> typed:

>

> $ mail -f

> "/home/simon/mbox": 0 messages

>

> just to double check that there weren't any lingering messages in

> there. When I then opened Alpine, it seemed all my emails had vanished!


I think that Alpine's "mbox" driver has a higher precedence than the 
"maildir" driver; so if both mailbox types exist, and you're not manually 
configuring the inbox-path, then Alpine will see the mbox and ignore the 
maildir.

I'm guessing that when you ran "mail -f", it created an empty mbox file in 
your homedir, so now Alpine sees that as a valid mailbox with zero 
messages in it, and it is ignoring the maildir that actually has your 
messages in it.

If so, you have a few options:

1) Confirm that ${HOME}/mbox is empty, and then simply delete it.

2) Assuming you use maildir exclusively, disable the mbox driver in 
Alpine.  Go into the configuration screen (M -> S -> C), search (W) for 
"Disable These Drivers", and add "mbox" to the list.

3) Manually set inbox-path to point to your maildir.  (Again, in the 
configuration screen, search for "Inbox Path".)


  -Jason